Imperial Earth

“Perhaps so, Mr. Makenzie. But you haven’t finished.”

Duncan looked in surprise at the empty air. Then Under Secretary Smith gestured toward the sketchbook.

“Never take anything for granted,” he said mildly. “Start at the other end.”

Feeling slightly foolish, Duncan reopened the sketchbook, then flipped it over as he realized that Karl had used it from both directions. (But he had been badly shaken by those last drawings, and was not thinking too clearly )

The inside back cover was blank, but the facing page bore the single enigmatic word ARGUS. It meant nothing to Duncan, though it did arouse some faint and unidentifiable association from history. He turned the page-and had one of the biggest shocks of his life.

As he stared incredulously at the drawing that occupied the entire area of the paper, he was suddenly transported back to Golden Reef. There could be no misinterpretation; yet as far as he knew, Karl had never shown the slightest interest in the minutiae of terrestial zoology. The very idea that any Titanian might be fascinated by marine biology was faintly incongruous.

Yet here was a detailed study, with the perspective meticulously worked out around the faintly limned x, y-, and z-axes of the spiny sea urchin,

Diadema. Only a dozen of its thin, radiating needles were shown, but it was clear that there were hundreds, occupying the entire sphere of space around it.

That was astonishing enough, but there was something even more remarkable.

This drawing must have required hours of devoted labor. Karl had dedicated to an unprepossessing little invertebrate-which surely he could never have seen in his life!-all the love and skill he had applied to the portrait of

Calindy.

In the bright sunshine outside the old State Department, Duncan and the

Ambassador had to wait for five minutes before the next shuttle came gliding silently down Virginia Avenue. No one was within earshot, so Duncan said with quiet urgency: “Does “Argus’ mean anything to you?”

“As a matter of fact, yes-though I’m damned if I see how it can help. I still have the remnants of a classical education, and unless I’m very much mistaken, Argus was the name of Odysseus’ old dog. It recognized him when he came home to Ithaca after his twenty years of wandering, then died.”

Duncan brooded over this information for a few seconds, then shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re right-that’s no help at all. And I still want to know why these people I met-or didn’t meet-are so interested in Karl. As they admitted at the start, there’s no suggestion that he’s done anything illegal, as far as

Earth is concerned. And I suspect that he may have only bent some Titanian regulations, not broken them.”

“Just a moment-just a moment!” said the Ambassador. “You’ve reminded me of something.” His face went through some rather melodramatic contortions, then smoothed itself out. He glanced around conspiratorially, saw that there was no one within hearing and that the shuttle was still three minutes away by the countdown indicator.

“I think I may have it, and I’ll be obliged if you don’t attribute this to me. But just consider the following wild speculation… “Every organism has defense mechanisms to protect itself. You’ve just encountered one-part of the security system of Earth. This particular

group, what259 ever its responsibilities may be, probably consists of a fairly small number of important people. I expect I know most of them-in fact, one voice… never mind…

“You could call it a watchdog committee. Such a committee has to have a name for itself-a secret name, naturally. In the course of my duties, I occasionally hear of such things, and carefully forget them…. “Now, Argus was a watchdog. So what better name for-such a group? Mind you,

I’m still not asserting anything. But imagine the acute embarrassment of a secret organization that happens to find its name carefully spelled out in highly mysterious circumstances.”

It was a very plausible theory, and Duncan was sure that the Ambassador would not have advanced it without excellent reasons. But it did not go even halfway.

“That’s all very well, and I’m prepared to accept it. But what the devil has all this to do with a drawing of a sea urchin? I feel I’m going slowly mad.”

The shuttle was now gliding to a halt in front of them, and the Ambassador waved him into it.

“If it’s any consolation, Duncan, be assured that you’re in very good company. I’d sacrifice a fair share of my modest retirement benefits if I could eavesdrop now on Under Secretary Smith and his invisible friends.”

BUSINESS AND DESIRE

There was no way of telling, as Duncan stood at the window of Calindy’s apartment, that he was not looking down at the busy traffic of 57th

Street on a crisp winter night, when the first flakes of snow were drifting down, to melt at once as they struck the heated sidewalks.

But this was summer, not winter; and even President Bernstein’s limousine was not as old as the cars moving silently a hundred meters below. He was watching the past, perhaps a hologram from the late twentieth century. Yet though Duncan knew that he was actually far underground, there was nothing that he could do to convince his senses of this fact.

He was alone with Calindy at last, though in circumstances of which he could never have dreamed only a few days ago. How ironic that, now the opportunity had come, he felt barely the faintest flicker of desire!

“What is it?” he asked suspiciously, as Calindy handed him a slim crystal goblet containing a few centimeters of blood-red liquid.

“If I told you, the name would mean nothing. And if I said what it cost, you’d be scared to drink it. Just taste it slowly; you’ll never have another chance, and it will do you good.”

It was good-smooth, slightly sweet, and, Duncan was quite certain, charged with several megatons of slumbering energy. He sipped it very slowly indeed, watching Calindy as she moved around the room.

He had not really known what to expect, yet her apartment had still been something of a surprise. It was almost stark in its simplicity, but large and beautifully proportioned” with dove-gray walls, a blue vaulted ceiling like the sky itself, and a green carpet that gave the impression of a small sea of grass lapping against the walls. There were fewer than a dozen pieces of furniture: four deeply cushioned chairs, two divans, a closed writing desk, a glass cabinet full of delicate chinaware, a low table upon which were lying a small box and a splendid book on twenty-second century primitives-and, of course, the ubiquitous Comsole, its screen now crawling with abstract art that was very far from primitive.

Even without the force of gravity to remind him, there was no danger that

Duncan would forget he was on Earth. He doubted if a private home on any other planet could show a display like this; but he would not like to live here. Everything was a little too perfect and displayed

altogether too clearly the Terran obsession with the past. He suddenly remembered Ambassador Farrell’s remark:

“We aren’t decadent, but our children will be.” That would include Calindy’s generation. Perhaps the Ambassador was right…. He took another sip, staring at Calindy in silence as she orbited the room.

Clearly ill at ease, she moved a chair through an imperceptible fraction of an inch, and gave a picture an equally invisible adjustment. Then she came back to the divan and sat down beside him.

A little more purposefully now, she leaned across the low coffee table and picked up the box lying upon it.

“Have you seen one of these?” she asked, as she opened the lid.

Lying in a nest of velvet was something that looked like a large, silver egg, about twice the size of the real eggs that Duncan had encountered in the Cente